Standards Wiki & Discussion

Standards Wiki & Discussion

IBM facilitated an online conversation during the summer of 2008, in which 70 independent, forward-thinking experts across the globe - from academia, standards, law, government and public policy - debated the question of whether standard setting bodies have kept pace with today's commercial, social, legal and political realities. Actionable suggestions to modernize their processes were offered during the six-week discussion, with an eye toward increasing standards transparency, fairness and quality.

In this attached file, please find suggestions that were proffered by individuals during the wiki. While they do not necessarily reflect unanimous or consensus views, the thoughtful comments and recommendations illustrate the velocity and impact of this important discussion.

The wiki inspired IBM to formulate and adopt the following set of principles to guide its participation in the open standards community:

Preamble

Open standards can help deliver good governance, societal freedoms, economic health, business growth, global competition, and technological innovation. To that end, IBM, supports the consistent and fair application of standards development practices for all stakeholders, whether they be consumer, governmental, commercial, or open source, in emerging and mature economies alike. IBM does now, and will continue, to adhere to the following principles, informing IBM's participation in the standards community with integrity, innovation and good faith:

The tenets of IBM's new policy are to:

Begin or end participation in standards bodies based on the quality and openness of their processes, membership rules, and intellectual property policies.

Encourage emerging and developed economies to both adopt open global standards and to participate in the creation of those standards.

Collaborate with standards bodies and developer communities to ensure that open software interoperability standards are freely available and implementable.

Help drive the creation of clear, simple and consistent intellectual property policies for standards organizations, thereby enabling standards developers and implementers to make informed technical and business decisions.

For example, IBM will:

Review and take necessary actions concerning its membership in standards organizations.

In the regions and countries where we do business, encourage local participation in the creation and use of standards that solve the problems and meet the requirements of all affected stakeholders around the world. We will advocate governance policies in standards bodies that encourage diverse participation.

Work for process reform in standards organizations so that proxies or surrogates cannot be used in standards creation and approval.

Collaborate with standards organizations and stakeholders to streamline and consolidate intellectual property licenses and policies, with a focus on enabling software applications to become more easily interoperable by the use of open standards.

Information

For more information about this standards discussion, please email us: